A Dark Night in Aurora: Inside James Holmes and the Colorado Mass Shootings

By Dr. William H. Reid

James Holmes killed or wounded seventy people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Only one man was allowed to record extensive interviews with the shooter. This is what he found.

On July 20, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado, a man in dark body armor and a gas mask entered a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises with a tactical shotgun, a high-capacity assault rifle, and a sidearm. He threw a canister of tear gas into the crowd and began firing. Soon twelve were dead and fifty-eight were wounded; young children and pregnant women were among them. The man was found calmly waiting at his car. He was detained without resistance.

Unlike the Columbine, Newtown, San Bernadino, and Las Vegas shootings, James Holmes is unique among mass shooters in his willingness to be taken into custody alive. In the court case that followed, only Dr. William H. Reid, a distinguished forensic psychiatrist, would be allowed to record interviews with the defendant. Reid would read Holmes’ diary, investigate his phone calls and text messages, interview his family and acquaintances, speak to his victims, and review tens of thousands of pages of evidence and court testimony in an attempt to understand how a happy, seemingly normal child could become a killer.

A Dark Night in Aurora uses the twenty-three hours of unredacted interview transcripts never seen by the public and Reid’s research to bring the reader inside the mind of a mass murderer. The result is chilling, gripping study of abnormal psychology and how a lovely boy named Jimmy became a killer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Release date: Jul 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781510735538

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Copyright © 2018 by William H. Reid

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Rain Saukas

Cover photos credit AP images

ISBN: 978-1-5107-3552-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3553-8

Printed in the United States of America

Insert photos are derived from evidence used in court proceedings and recently released to the public, in many cases by the prosecution.

Dedication

To the victims, both the deceased and the survivors,

who live daily with memory and disability, the first responders, the

Colorado judicial system, and to Holmes’s parents,

Arlene and Robert, who did nothing wrong.

Jonathan Blunk

A. J. Boik

Jesse Childress

Gordon Cowden

Jessica Ghawi

John Larimer

Matthew McQuinn

Micayla Medek

Veronica Moser-Sullivan

Alex Sullivan

Alex Teves

Rebecca Wingo

Thanks to my wife, Elise, for her immense help and understanding; my assistant, Jean Hamilton, for retrieving and organizing information for both the writing and the vetting of this book; Mike Campbell, my editor at Skyhorse, and my agent, Linda Langton. Without Richard Ciccone, MD, I might never have received the case referral. Steve Zansberg provided valuable legal counsel. Claudia and David Ladensohn, Terry Ganey, Bob Kolker, Judith Bass, A. D. Oppenheim, and John Mayer helped to get things off the ground and keep them aloft. Appreciation also goes to my former assistant, Kathy Pomeroy, for her work in the case itself, and to federal, Colorado, Arapahoe County, and Aurora law enforcement; Colorado Assistant Attorney General Tanya E. Wheeler; Colorado Mental Health Institute-Pueblo personnel; and Arapahoe County corrections staff. Many readers reviewed and criticized early drafts and chapters: Aileen, Alan, Brandi, Buddy, Dan, Doug, Elise, Jan, Jana, Jodi, Jon, Kyle, Michelle, Mollie, Ron, Skip, and probably more. My brother Dan Reid of Paladin Precision Shooting, LLC (see his recent book, Guns Are Stupid, People Are Smart) and former FBI SWAT and firearms instructor Joe Holtslag provided valuable information on weapons and tactics. Apologies to the kind folks that I’ve inadvertently omitted.

Contents

Introduction

JIMMY

  1. Jimmy

  2. The Changes Begin

  3. College

JAMES

  4. Aurora

  5. Seeds of the Mission

HOLMES

  6. Juggernaut

  7. A Dark K/Night Rises

  8. Armageddon

AFTERMATH

  9. Aftermath

10. James Holmes in Jail

11. The Lawyers, the Court, and the Shrinks

12. My Interviews of James Holmes

13. The Trial Begins

14. The Holmes Defense

15. Punishment

Epilogue: Denouement

Afterword: The Search for Why

About the Author

Photos

Introduction

The Aurora, Colorado, cinema shootings were striking tragedies, leaving a dozen people dead, scores wounded, hundreds emotionally scarred, and a community that will never be the same. But it wasn’t the only mass shooting of our time. James Holmes, unique though he is, is not the only killer of his kind. This book arises from a confluence of tragic event, surviving perpetrator, scrupulous investigation, and the uncommon fairness of the American judicial system, a system that provides resources and due process to both sides in even the most heinous of cases. That confluence created a rare opportunity to study a mentally ill but very intelligent, highly organized murderer, the extraordinary events that led to his crimes, the shootings, the trial, and its sequelae.

A Dark Night in Aurora exists because James Holmes survived. He wasn’t killed by police; he didn’t commit suicide. The elements of the shootings, a web of important precursors, and Holmes himself received extraordinary scrutiny during the three years in which the prosecution and defense prepared for a trial that would last for months. The verdict and sentence were not plea bargained, as often happens in such cases. This time, the investigators and other experts had information and data—there is a difference—from many sources, and their work was shielded from media contamination.

Most of those with access to the huge mass of material collected worked for either the prosecution or the defense. Only two forensic experts were retained in entirely nonpartisan roles, by the judge rather than either side: Colorado psychiatrist Jeffrey Metzner, MD, and me. Dr. Metzner came fairly early to the process; I was retained a bit later, as a result of legal wrangling that caused Judge Samour to search for a second court expert. I had the benefit not only of the existing seventy-five thousand pages of evidence, hundreds of audio and video files, and access to the defendant and scores of witnesses, experts, and others associated with the case, but also of Dr. Metzner’s earlier work and counsel as I pursued my own investigations.

This book is a result of all that happened and all that was uncovered. It doesn’t spring from an author’s mind. I didn’t make up the characters, imagine their words and actions, or manipulate any events. I’ve tried to describe those characters, words, actions, and events with scrupulous accuracy and express my interpretations and opinions in ways that readers will find intriguing. My greater hope is that the book does justice to all concerned.

Finally, a note about the quotes and short transcripts scattered through the chapters. Many are from Holmes’s conversations with me during our nine private, video-recorded interviews (almost twenty-three hours in all). They are memories, thoughts, explanations, and impressions expressed in his own words after the shootings. One of the early manuscript readers called it an unedited look behind the curtain at a man whose thoughts and plans had been hidden for years, a chance for the reader to see, and consider for himself or herself, what Holmes was like as he spoke with me. Other quotes are taken from text and e-mail exchanges between Holmes and others before the shootings, things that he said or felt, and what others perceived about him, as he moved through the years, then months, then days that culminated in the tragedy.

—WHR

January 2018

JIMMY

1. Jimmy

Lots of hugs.

(James Holmes’s memory of his early childhood)

James Eagan Holmes came into this world December 13, 1987, in Scripps Memorial Hospital, La Jolla, California. His mother had a briefly complicated labor and a cesarean section, but there was nothing particularly special about his birth. Arlene and Robert were excited to see their first child, the first grandchild in either of their families.

They named him after a paternal uncle and added Arlene’s family name. His birth announcement (which, in a bizarre twist, became a piece of evidence in his later fight against receiving the death penalty) says he weighed seven pounds, eight ounces. There’s a lovely photo of him resting on Robert’s chest.

Every baby is cute; every baby is sweet. Every baby brings its parents, and the world, a promise for the future. For the next decade, this baby was a normal little boy named Jimmy.

____________

Arlene Holmes was a nurse at Scripps Memorial when Jimmy was born. Bob was a statistician at the nearby Navy Personnel Center. They had met at Berkeley during the late 1970s, where Arlene pursued a degree in English before going to nursing school and Bob, having graduated in mathematics from Stanford and gotten a master’s at UCLA, completed his PhD in statistics. The couple got married in Los Angeles, lived briefly in Washington, DC, while Bob worked with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and then moved to San Diego.

Both parents were models of success, with family backgrounds that contained both achievement and adversity. Arlene was a Southern California girl, born in Santa Clarita near Los Angeles. Bob and his twin sister, Betty, were born in Istanbul; their father (Jimmy’s grandfather) was stationed in Turkey at the time.

Bob’s father, also Robert, was a West Point graduate (and brother of an Annapolis graduate) with a distinguished military and civilian career that included service in the Pacific during World War II. The family can be traced to early colonial times. Bob’s mother once served as governor of the exclusive Monterey Bay Colony of Mayflower Descendants.

As in most families, there were difficulties as well as successes, and difficulties to come. A few relatives on both sides of the extended family had alcohol problems or minor emotional conditions. At least three were diagnosed with more serious mental disorders that required, at times, psychiatric hospitalization. Bob’s twin sister, Betty, developed severe mental illness early in life. It was something we never really talked about, he said at his son’s trial. He suspected that Betty, who has been mentally disabled for decades, has some variety of schizophrenia.

Bob’s father, Jimmy’s paternal grandfather, had notable psychiatric symptoms as well, especially late in life. His military record refers to psychiatric evaluations, and, although he was successful in many ways, he was once admitted to the Monterey Peninsula Community Hospital for disabling obsessive-compulsive disorder. Jimmy and his sister, Chris, enjoyed both Betty and Robert senior. The adult James remembers Betty as a kind and loving aunt.

Arlene’s father, Burt Eagan, was hospitalized during midlife for bouts of depression and psychosis; he died when Jimmy was four. Her mother, Helen, was a kind and patient grandmother who loved Jimmy and Chris. The family visited Helen often; Jimmy and Chris loved to swim and watch movies at her Los Angeles retirement complex. There’s a family video of Grandmother Helen and young Jimmy making gingerbread cookies, and Jimmy excitedly asking, When we’re done taking our nap, can we eat all these?

It was a good family, with closeness and love. Lots of hugs, James the adult would remember from jail, and parents who modeled values of education, initiative, and family life.

Jimmy hit all the usual developmental milestones. He talked at the right age, began walking at the right age, and was obviously a smart and loving boy. An early phase with temper tantrums evolved into a boy who liked to hug, laughed a lot, and showed all the joys and feelings of childhood. There were no problems in preschool at KinderCare or in kindergarten at Sundance Elementary.

All little kids have fears, and Jimmy had his. On family trips to visit Arlene’s mother in Los Angeles, he sometimes worried that thugs would climb through a window and kidnap him. Back at home, he was afraid for a few months of what he called nail ghosts, monsters that might hammer nails through the wall beside his bed at night and poke him. Mom and Dad reassured him. They let me sleep in their bed, he remembers, or they’d say there’s no monsters, and the fears went away.

His parents treasure photos and videos of Jimmy as small child, singing a Christmas song for example, or during grace before a meal. There’s a home movie of Jimmy sitting at the kitchen table getting a haircut from his grandmother, another of him wearing little rabbit ears, another of the toddler running to hug his father, and one of a proud, five-year-old Jimmy gently holding his baby sister, Chris, soon after she was born.

When Chris was about a year old, Jimmy composed a letter to her. He didn’t write it himself (he had just turned six); he told his mother what to write:

Dear Chris,

I love you, Chris. I wish you could play basketball and soccer with me. I wish you could play Lite-Brite. You have soft, cute skin. You’re a happy baby. I wish you could play marbles with me. You can when you grow up. You need four more years.

Love,

Jimmy, your brother

Years later, in a different world, Chris would read that letter to the jury at her brother’s sentencing hearing and say, When I was only one, he was happy I was his sister. A few minutes after that, looking at photos being shown in court of the two of them riding bikes and smiling and wearing Christmas hats, she quietly added, There was a time when we were happy.

When Jimmy was about seven, the family moved several hundred miles north to Salinas, California, in order to be near Bob’s ailing mother, Jane. They bought a house in the rural suburb of Oak Hills, a couple of miles northwest of town. They planned to stay in Oak Hills/Salinas for five years and then reevaluate the situation.

Bob began work in statistical forecasting at the nearby Defense Manpower Data Center, largely on the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (AFVAB, a test to determine qualifications for enlistment and military occupational specialties). Arlene, a registered nurse, raised the family and was eventually employed by Central Coast Visiting Nurses. Jimmy started elementary school in Castroville; in a few years, Chris would go there as well.

Salinas, the county seat of Monterey County, had about 150,000 people. Oak Hills was much smaller, a few hundred middle-class houses surrounded by the huge farms that fill the Salinas Valley and support its motto, Salad Bowl of the World. Although just a few miles from toney Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea, agricultural and diverse Salinas, Oak Hills, and Castroville (a rural, working-class town of 7,000) were very different from suburban San Diego.

The family lived in a modest one-story ranch on Foxtail Place, with a wood-shingle roof, lots of bushes in front, and plenty of eucalyptus trees behind the house. Jimmy had his own room. Their backyard opened into vacant land about a block from State Highway 156, with hundreds of acres of strawberry fields just beyond. If you walked southwest along the path beside Charter Oak on any given afternoon during the late 1990s, passing Clover Trail and turning left onto Foxtail Place, you might see Jimmy and the gang of grade school kids playing basketball in the cul-de-sac in front of Jimmy’s house.

James the adult remembers a big canyon behind the house, adventurous to a kid but actually just a dip in the landscape with a little creek, where he and his friends would play capture the flag for hours. He remembers digging ponds in the backyard, mudholes really, and jumping into them as he pretended they were a water park. He remembers playing with his little sister, who sometimes helped him dig. He remembers interesting neighbors. One ran a jewelry shop; another taught art at a penitentiary. He remembers friends and neighborhood parties, games and sports, Halloweens and Christmases.

No mystery here, no violence, nothing unusual; just lots of good memories for everyone who was there.

In early 1996, just after Jimmy turned eight, Arlene and Bob became a little concerned about his behavior. They brought the family to local counselor John Adams and told him that although Jimmy was doing fine in school, he was very Nintendo-oriented, socialized poorly at home, and sometimes threw his stuffed animals. The counseling records indicate that Jimmy was quiet and noncommunicative during that first visit but was otherwise pleasant and alert and played with his sister. Adams made some recommendations about discipline and the differences between Mom’s and Dad’s parenting styles. Within three visits, Arlene and Bob reported great improvement. All seemed normal, and they stopped the counseling.

Psychiatrists and psychologists sometimes exaggerate the importance of a few counseling notes, especially when the subject is as sensational as James Holmes. It’s important to point out that none of the complaints or descriptions in those early childhood records was particularly worrisome. Little boys throw things all the time; kids often behave differently at home than at school or with friends. Counselor Adams gave Jimmy a common, almost generic diagnosis at the time (oppositional defiant disorder), perhaps just to be sure the sessions would be covered by the family’s insurance. By the second or third visit, the diagnosis no longer applied. Nothing in the family services notes suggests future social or psychiatric problems or what was to occur in Aurora some sixteen years later.

During his first few years in Oak Hills, Jimmy attended Castroville Elementary, two or three miles down Highway 156 from the family home. He was always on the honor roll. His teachers remember him with adjectives like intelligent, smiling, active, helpful, and sweet. There’s a video of him receiving an award for 100 percent attendance.

His second grade teacher, Ann Hestand, recalls a little boy who was friendly, considerate, and popular with the other children. Testifying during the sentencing phase of the trial, she remembered his wonderful smile.

His fifth grade teacher, Paul Karrer, remembers him as a very bright boy, friendly and popular. Karrer testified during the trial that he was balanced … like a renaissance kid, the leader of the exceptional students. He had academic abilities and the kids liked him. As a special project, Mr. Karrer let Jimmy and another fifth grader write computer code to create a class website—no easy task during the late 1990s—after they finished their classwork. Karrer had a contest during gym classes in which the kids would try to outrun him for prizes. Jimmy was the first to beat him. Jimmy and his friends were the kinds of students that make teaching rewarding, Karrer said. He was a wonderful kid when he was ten.

Suzy Diaz was the school secretary at Castroville Elementary. She knew Jimmy from the time he registered for second grade until he moved on to Gambetta Middle School (now North Monterey County Middle School) after fifth grade. She, too, remembers that Jimmy stood out even among his especially bright peers as they moved from Ms. Hestand’s second grade class to Ms. Miser’s third grade, Mr. Frost’s fourth, and Mr. Karrer’s fifth.

The family took lots of trips together—to Disneyland, to the beach, skiing, and camping. There are photos and videos of Jimmy and Chris in the ocean, at an aquarium, on Segways at a wildlife park, camping in the woods, playing miniature golf, snorkeling in Hawaii, and having Super Soaker fights in bumper boats at Big Bear Lake. As they got a little older, Jimmy and Chris loved visiting their Uncle Dexter and Aunt Terri near Chico, California, where they could ride horses and fish in the couple’s pond.

Bob and Arlene cared deeply about each other and the kids. Mom made sure they had dinner together every evening. Mom and Dad went to the kids’ concerts and sports events and spent time with them whenever they could. Dad coached Jimmy’s soccer team. Chris went to his games, too, tagging along, she remembers, and handing out oranges.

Jimmy was happiest when he was playing soccer, Bob said, and liked having his father as his coach. He wasn’t a star athlete, but he participated in lots of sports in Salinas and San Diego: soccer, basketball, kickball, track, and martial arts. He was a runner on the Monterey County youth track team, going with friends and family to meets around Northern California. There’s a photo of him getting a medal at their first meet on the Hartnell College campus. Former friends and team members remember him as a team player, a good sport, and never a poor loser.

Bob and Arlene were loving and caring of each other. They never fought in front of the kids, and Chris never saw them being mean to each other. Chris remembers their father as conservative, mathematical, and analytical. Dad could be a little socially awkward, she says, perhaps more than James at times, because he’s always thinking. Bob and Jimmy were both quiet types and sometimes took a while to articulate things. Mom was more creative, open, free-flowing. Chris says her parents instilled a hard-working ethic … to do well in school … treat other people how you’d want to be treated.

Although they were close and loving, no one talked very much about feelings. Bob testified that we were more scientific, nonemotional. Much as Jimmy is universally described as shy and not seeking of the limelight, Bob doesn’t like public attention or speaking to large groups of people. He doesn’t easily show his emotions.

I asked James the adult about memories of times with his parents and what he remembered as the nicest things they’d done for him. His answers were short and a little superficial, but poignant in their own way. The three nicest times with his dad were Dad’s paying for most of his car, taking him to the beach, and helping him move. The beach vignette was the closest James came to remembering feelings from that list: We had ice cream … It was good. We got to spend family time together.

He remembered more personal times with his mother: the letters she wrote to him, taking him to the zoo and a Where’s Waldo? adventure, and making spaghetti with him. I asked about the time they cooked spaghetti. He smiled as he remembered the boiling pot of pasta and Mom testing to see if it was al dente. She threw a piece of the spaghetti onto the cabinet, he said, and she left it there. When she took it off, she stripped the paint off the cabinet. The memory, like the pasta, left a lasting impression.

Mom did lots of other things with Jimmy and Chris, like creating papier-mâché art projects and coloring Easter eggs. Those times in the kitchen with Mom and Grandmother Helen stand out in Jimmy’s family memories; he still likes to cook.

Chris, their parents, and their neighbors all remember that Jimmy was gentle with his little sister and that she always looked up to him. She was occasionally annoying, like all kid sisters, but they were very close. Jimmy tried to feed her when she was a baby, and he read to her when she was a toddler. He often included her in the big kids’ games.

Chris remembers playing with her big brother, building forts, and throwing things for Zooby, their Labrador retriever, to fetch. She remembers the secret tree house Jimmy built with his friends when he was ten or eleven years old and the day he finally let her into it. Chris would go to Jimmy when she was uncomfortable among the older kids, and he’d calm her down. She felt secure with big brother Jimmy around.

One of neighbor Katherine Barrett’s most vivid memories of Jimmy and Chris was a trip to a water park. Chris wasn’t allowed to go on a big water slide. That’s okay, Jimmy told her, I’ll stay with you, and

Reviews for A Dark Night in Aurora

[pauntley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a forensic account of the life and crimes of James Holmes, a mass murderer who shot and killed 12 people and injured 70 more at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises on July 20, 2012 at the Century 16 cinema in Aurora, Colorado, US. His plea of insanity failed and the jury convicted him in 2014 of 24 counts of murder, 140 of attempted murder and an explosives offence. (The doubling of the number of murder and attempt charges was a consequence of the peculiarity of Colorado law, which recognises two distinct ways of committing the offences of murder and attempted murder.) He was sentenced to 12 consecutive life terms for the murders and a total of 3,318 years in prison for the remaining offences. In Colorado murder trials the jury first decides whether the offender is guilty of the offence and after a finding of guilt, goes on to determine whether the murderer must be sentenced to death. Though the jury rejected Holmes’ plea of insanity on the question of guilt it evidently concluded that his mental illness mitigated his crimes for it declined to recommend the death penalty. He is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison, without prospect of parole. Holmes was 24 years old when he opened fire on the cinema audience.Dark Night in Aurora has specialist interest as an expert analysis of the Colorado process of bifurcated trial and the deployment of the expert opinion evidence on Holmes’ mental state leading up to the massacre. Holmes himself is of very little interest. He appears to fall within the Hannah Arendt’s well known characterization of horrific murderers who are essentially ‘banal’ in their criminality. Holmes’ account of his reasons for the massacre was superficial and inarticulate, reflecting his incapacity for empathy with his fellow human beings. Ample information on his life and the circumstances of the massacre is available on the internet for those who might be interested. The author, William H Reid is an eminent forensic psychiatrist, a past president of the American Academy of Science and Law. He was appointed by the presiding judge during Holmes’ trial to provide neutral guidance on the contested question of Holmes’ sanity and legal responsibility. He had access to the extensive records compiled by the expert witnesses for the defence and prosecution and conducted extensive interviews with Holmes. The book is in two parts. The first half is an account of Holmes’ life culminating in the mass murder at the cinema. The second half, called ‘Aftermath’, includes substantial extracts from the interviews conducted by Reid, evidence of the expert psychological and psychiatric witnesses and a detailed account of the trial. As a consequence of this bifurcation, there is substantial and tedious repetition of much of the biographical material during the second half of the book..Holmes was a brilliant undergraduate who began postgraduate studies in neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Denver. He terminated his studies a little more than a month before the massacre at the Century Theatre. He suffered from depression and during his postgraduate year had regular psychiatric counselling. Various diagnoses of his condition appear in the expert reports: depression, autism spectrum disorder, schizophreniform disorder, conditions short of outright psychosis. In his own account Holmes said that he killed his victims in order to alleviate his worsening depression. His psychiatrists were aware of his homicidal thoughts but had insufficient grounds to commence proceedings to detain him during his postgraduate studies. His preparations for the massacre at the Century 16 cinema were meticulous and conducted in complete secrecy. They were, in fact, excessive in their elaboration. Holmes acquired armour and weapons far beyond his needs or competence some of which required specialist combatant training. The death toll would have been far higher had he been competent in their use. Though Holmes undoubtedly suffered from a serious mental illness, however the disease might be characterized, there could be no possibility of an acquittal on the ground of insanity. The Colorado criteria for exculpation on the ground of insanity are brutal in their simplicity. It was sufficient to prove the obvious facts that Holmes knew what he was doing and knew that other people would believe that he intended to do amounted to murder. In the weeks before the massacre, Holmes kept a diary or notebook that he intended to be read by his psychiatric counsellors as a kind of testament after the shooting. Though Reid provides extensive summaries of the contents Holmes’ notebook is curiously unrevealing, juvenile in its rambling and incoherent account of his ‘philosophy’ and inarticulate in his attempts to explain his motives for the shootings. He believed that by killing other people he could accumulate what he called ‘human capital’ the value of which would increase incrementally with each person killed and that this accumulation of human capital would alleviate his depression. There is a complete absence of depth, penetration or intelligent acuity in the notebook. Equally juvenile are the selfies he posted on the internet posing with his weapons and orange-dyed hair and pulling ‘devilish’ facial expressions. He said he ‘wanted to be remembered as a killer’. These images elicited a substantial fan mail, mostly from women who sent him money and photographs.Prison is not a hospitable environment for self-discovery or moral development. One would like to believe, however, that Holmes might achieve some adequate moral understanding of the magnitude of his crimes in the wasted decades to come.